Meet Pau and his family. See more videos and learn more about TRANSFORM California.

From North Carolina to California and everywhere in between, transgender individuals face threats from lawmakers, bigots, pundits and others who choose to marginalize their fellow residents.

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The situation is serious in Los Angeles, where just last month, Kourtney Yochum, a transgender woman of color, was shot and killed in broad daylight on Skid Row. Weeks later, Annabel Montoya, a transgender teen, was critically injured when she was intentionally hit by a car and abandoned on the side of a road in Monterey Park.

But despite the violence and a wave of bills targeting transgender people, there is reason for hope.

Consider, for example, that the ACLU is challenging a dehumanizing law recently passed in North Carolina that discriminates against LGTBQ individuals. Legendary recording artists including Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr have canceled concerts to protest HB2, the state’s so-called “bathroom law,” and several companies have pulled their business from the state. Similar protests are occurring in other states where transgender rights are under attack.

This week in Los Angeles, the ACLU of California LGTBQ rights team, in coalition with more than 30 organizations, furthered the protests against transgender discrimination with the launch of TRANSFORM California, a statewide public education campaign to raise awareness, understanding and acceptance of transgender and gender nonconforming Californians.

See social coverage of the L.A. launch on Storify.

Join advocates from across the state to learn more about transgender people in California and the issues they face, and to speak up and oppose any efforts that single out and discriminate against transgender or gender non-conforming Californians.

Look out for upcoming TRANSFORM California launches in cities across the state, from Sacramento to San Diego.​

In addition to the TRANSFORM California campaign, the ACLU of California LGTBQ rights team is working to strengthen the rights of transgender people through legal advocacy, policy advocacy, public education and community organizing. Among our goals:

• Creating safe and bias-free schools for trans and gender non-conforming youth;
• Enforcing laws against discrimination based on gender identity and gender;
• Decreasing profiling and mass incarceration of LGBTQ people, and pressing public officials to ensure that gay, bisexual, transgender and gender nonconforming people in police, jail and immigration custody are safe and treated humanely.

If you have experienced discrimination or violence because of your gender identity, how you express your gender, or gender nonconformity, contact us. Also, check out our resources about restroom access rights and rights in school.

Melissa Goodman is director of the ACLU of Southern California’s LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project.

California created the nation's first paid family leave program for workers more than a decade ago, allowing for workers to get paid time off to bond with a newborn or adopted child or care for sick family members (a child, spouse, parent, parent-in-law, sibling, grandparent or grandchild).

Now, thanks to a new law (AB 908) just signed by Governor Jerry Brown, family leave is more affordable, particularly for low-wage workers. That’s important given that studies show that low-wage workers are less likely to take advantage of paid family leave because they can’t afford it. AB 908 increases the percentage of weekly pay lower-wage workers get when they take family leave, from 55 to 70 percent. The new law increases the percentage of weekly pay for all other workers using the program from 55 to 60 percent.

Such reform continues the significant momentum for long-overdue affordable family leave in our country. This month, New York created a state program which will allow 12 weeks of job-protected paid family leave. San Francisco became the first city to give most workers six weeks of paid leave at their full salaries.

But there’s still significant work to be done. Consider, for example, that the United States is currently the only developed nation that does not provide a national paid leave program.

One step forward would be for California to add full job protection for people who work at small companies with 50 or fewer employees. Workers at large California companies (employing 50 or more) have job protection through the federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), but the 40 percent of Californians who work for small companies do not.

And FMLA or CFRA don't protect you if you've taken the leave to care for a sibling, grandparent, or grandchild. You may, in some instances, be protected by gender discrimination laws, but that is complicated and depends on the facts in each case. So there's a big gap and if you're at a smaller company, you use the leave program at your own peril.

And let’s be real: six weeks is not enough to meet a typical person's caregiving obligations or to bond with a new child. If you are a parent, did you feel sufficiently ready to spring back to work six weeks after your baby was born or became part of your family? I’m guessing no.

A bill authored by Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D.-Santa Barbara) would fix this problem for new parents. SB 1166 will provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for new parents to bond with a child after birth, adoption, or foster placement. This bill is needed, but more also needs to be done about giving more time to people taking care of parents, siblings or a spouse.

Deciding to take family leave, time off from a job in a still uncertain economy, is not something anyone does lightly. And remember, the paid family leave program is funded entirely through worker contributions, not the state. It’s a benefit program we pay into through our paychecks.  Workers who use the program take a pay cut, getting a percentage of their weekly pay, not full pay.

But recent research shows that fear of retaliation or losing one’s job is one of the top reasons workers give for not using the paid family leave. And we should all have time to bond with our children or take care of a loved one without fearing we might lose our jobs, after all we pay for it.

Melissa Goodman is director of LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California.